


A Chance Meeting

by Lucyemers



Series: Times Past [2]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Times past, period typical (and contemporary typical??) lack of understanding about bisexuality, tea (again)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 05:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8700112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucyemers/pseuds/Lucyemers
Summary: Written based on the prompt: Win Thursday also fell in love during the war, and it was also with a woman. An intense, whirl wind romance, and then the woman went off to France to drive ambulances and Win never saw her again. Until... up she pops in Oxford. Morse brings her round for Sunday lunch after meeting her at a concert and bonding over opera, and there she is in Win's kitchen, and there are Morse and Thursday in the livingroom.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [R00bs_Teacup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/gifts).



> written based on the prompt above for the Detective and Mystery Fandoms H/C Meme here:
> 
> http://clockfraught.livejournal.com/3308.html

The silence following the laugh she thought she had forgotten was gone the second the teacup hit the floor. It brought her out of her trance, but only enough for her knees to buckle as she put out a hand to the floor, then felt a bit of broken glass pierce her palm. She drew her hand up, grabbed a towel from the stove and squeezed it, took a deep breath and sat back on her heels. After twenty-one years she couldn’t believe she had recognized that sound. She also couldn’t believe that no one had heard her dropping that cup. She was almost grateful for the need to tend to the shards of china on the linoleum. She tried to breath slowly, tried to focus all of her attention on the ordinariness of the black and white check of the floor. But she wasn’t composed enough to raise her eyes to the three people who were suddenly peering at her from the kitchen door with what she hoped was concern but what she feared was confusion.

Fred was at her shoulder in a second. She didn’t look up and meet his eye. They knew each other too well, and he could sense distress in the slightest flicker in her face. “Win? Everything alright?” There was a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Cup wasn’t dried right is all, which I believe was your job, Dad. Slipped out of my hand.” She was please at the conveniently habitual teasing note in her voice. She let him help her up and went to the broom closet, grateful for the excuse to bustling about, to have something to busy her shaking hands and somewhere to focus rather than the face whose inevitable familiarity she feared would stop her in her tracks, shake her careful act of normalcy. 

“Hello, Morse. Good of you to stop in, dear.” She was sweeping the shattered teacup perhaps too carefully into the dustpan. Morse, thankfully satisfied that she was alright, was babbling on about the opera he’d been to, she could almost hear the smile on his face, but then he was good naturedly trying to make an introduction to his lunch guest. Here was the point where she was going to have to stand up, touch her hand, supposedly for the first time, in a polite and casual handshake, meet her eyes disinterestedly, go through a set of motions that would have to only betray light-hearted Sunday afternoon hospitality to two men who knew her very well, two men who built their lives around catching people in lies and ferreting out secrets desperately hid. And she didn’t think she could do it.

“Why don’t you two go on and talk about work. I can tell you’re itching to. No use boring us with it. I’ll help Mrs. Thursday with the tea.” She’d saved her. Again. She moved in silence to the sink and began filling the kettle. She turned on the gas. She stayed with her back to her until she felt another hand on her shoulder, similarly familiar, but less comforting for all her dismay at just how familiar it felt after so long. 

“Win?” the voice was so soft and close. 

“Annie.” She murmured back, but she didn’t turn around, and hadn’t responded to the touch. 

She felt Annie’s hand fall as she took a step back. She cleared her throat and her voice was less close, less intimate but more disconcertingly real. “I didn’t realize. I didn’t know you were in Oxford. I know this must have been a shock for you. I’m...sorry.”

“Don’t.” 

She was finally facing her, meeting her deep hazel eyes that were full of confusion and pain. 

She saw she’d been misunderstood. “Don’t be sorry. Nothing to be sorry for. You couldn’t have known. Sit.” She did, self consciously and abruptly.

She came to join Annie at their tiny kitchen table. She thought of all the mornings she’d had there with Joan and Sam before they went to school when the three of them took their time about breakfast chattering away at nursery rhymes, braving tiny tantrums over spilled porridge. With both of them gone she thought often of these days as she sat in the kitchen by herself in the late afternoon drinking her tea and cooking for two, something that was entirely new to her. 

Across from her sat the woman who preceded all of this. She remembered sitting at Annie’s table, the table that was hers as well for three weeks. Nightly they sat with their chairs pulled together so they were hip to hip, hand in hand. The first week she’d listened to Annie speak excitedly about the books she would write. The second week they had listened to the radio as Annie had been too tired to talk at all after doing six hour shifts with the Red Cross in the height of the Blitz. The third week they had desperately kissed, fought and cried and they each made different choices. During all three weeks Win had sought refuge in her bed as well as her at her table. She’d been sick with worry for her not yet husband whom she barely knew, but desperately loved, and sick with love and fear of the life growing inside her.

“I didn’t know you were here either.” Win was surprised at how gentle her voice was while she stared down her sharp memories, and she realized when she said “here” she meant “alive.” 

She could feel her eyes prick with unexpected tears at the thought and abruptly shifted the conversation to proper small talk. How much could they say? How much would be heard with Fred and Morse so close. “Are you....” Her mind rushed ahead of her married? Happily so? Hardly think of me? She almost never thought of Annie. Perhaps once a year or so and this made it all the harder when she did, made her breathless, made her have to feign a migraine so she could shut herself into their room and not be disturbed until her guilt, tears and longing had passed.

She tried again, “Are you...writing?”

Annie scoffed. “The pipe dreams of youth.” She looked at her hands then somewhere far off. “I couldn’t. Not after the war. I don’t know why. No, I own a bookshop. It’s fine. It keeps me busy.”

As the kettle whistled and she went about pouring and preparing, not looking at her, she allowed herself to ask with forced casualness, “Married?”

And there was that laugh she knew so well. “Honestly, Win?” She turned back to her hoping she would keep her voice down. There was so much knowing in the way she said her name perhaps too loudly, but she lowered as she continued, “What would I do with man? I was never like you. You know that.” There was even more knowing in the way she met her eye. And there was no bitterness in her voice. Not like before, _“Honestly, Win? What are you doing? Come with me.”_

“I know. I don’t like thinking of you alone is all.” She set a cup down in front of her. She hadn’t asked how she took it. She remembered.

“I can get by alone”, Annie finished. And she could. Win knew that. That was another way that she was never like her. Annie didn’t have the same desperate need that Win had, particularly in times of trial, for companionship, touch, comfort, intimacy. That need had burned in her like a flash bulb quick and blinding, and the need had been met when she had found herself in Annie’s arms in the darkness of an air raid shelter. Annie had seen her shaking and crying and sick, a perfect stranger, and she’d held her through the night’s bombing and taken her home when they’d heard the all clear. And Win had let her think that her tears and illness had been fear of the bombs and not the first weeks of Joan making her presence known. 

Never once had she regretted the way her life had unfolded. But she had ached in the years that followed with what she hadn’t said. During their first night together she hadn’t told her, “I’m in love with a soldier and carrying his child.” During his first night back home she hadn’t told him, “I’m sorry, but I needed someone to hold me while you were gone.” 

“But you’re not alone”, Annie said brightly. Win met her eyes steeling herself for the resentment she expects to find there and there is none. “You have your own home”, she continued, casting her eyes around the room as she brought the cup to her lips. “You’ve a family. And children?” She paused. “One or more?” “Two” Win replied almost automatically, “Sam’s the younger and Joan is twenty-one now. She…” At the words ‘twenty-one’ Annie had put her cup down a bit harsher than it looked like she had meant to. Of course she would remember. “She..doesn’t live here anymore.” Saying this she rose and went to the cabinet, seemingly in search of biscuits. She didn’t know if mentioning Joan would turn the conversation to their past or Joan’s future. She wasn’t sure she could talk about either. Annie was trying to keep the conversation light and continued, the cheerfulness in her voice almost discordant in the charged air of the tiny room. “She’s married now with a home of her own too is she?” Win set the biscuit tin down and peered out the window. “No..I..don’t believe so.” 

Of course Annie would remember Joan. Her departure was not something that she was prepared to discuss, but oh how they had discussed her arrival. She spoke the irony as soon as she thought it saying, “Joan’s rather more like you I think. She...needs to find her own way.”

The third week blissful week they had spent together had escalated to such a pitch that Annie had felt invincible, Win could recognize that now. She’d declared her intentions to be properly involved in the war effort. She was going to France to drive ambulances and Win could come with her. She could nurse if she couldn’t drive. They both had to be doing more, she’d said. And Win had looked up from where her head had been nestled against her chest and loved the hope and excitement in Annie’s eyes at the same time that the word had blurted out of her, “No.” And immediately Annie had pulled back. And wounded her not only with hurt but with accusation. “Honestly Win, what are you doing?” And she’d repeated, desperately, pleadingly, “Come with me.” 

And she’d thought about it. Not then but in the many years since. If she was only responsible for her own life maybe she would have, should have, even, said yes. She’d spent the months that followed working in her parents shop, sewing larger clothes, worrying for both of them, while Fred and Annie had been actually doing something. But the fact of the matter was that she was responsible for Joan then too, and because of that she didn’t think for a second. “I can’t. I’m going to have a baby. I’m going to be married.” She’d smiled slightly even as she had started to cry. And Annie had clearly mistaken her tears for unhappiness rather than guilt for having lied. She scooped her into her arms and let her cry. She had smoothed her hair and held her close and finally tried to soothe her with the words. “You don’t have to be married Win. It’s alright. You don’t have to.” “What?”, she’d sniffed. She was so confused, but looking back, perhaps Annie was more so. “You don’t have to get married.” Annie had continued. “I can help you. We can both work...or only I can...we can have this baby. We can make a home for it. You don’t have to.” she had finished, kissing her on her forehead. “But I love him.” This had silenced Annie. And her arms around her had gone slack. “I don’t understand”, she had murmured. “I know” Win had replied. “I don’t either.”

She wasn't sure she understood it even now, twenty one years later. When Fred had returned home she had been so delirious with joy that he was alive that it had taken her months to let go of the fear that she didn't realize she was carrying, the fear that she wouldn't be able to love him wholly enough or genuinely enough because of who she was, because of who else she had loved. Then two months into their life together she had dropped the fear like a suitcase forgotten at the threshold when one has finally returned home. And though her desires had never left her as she had thought they might (a glance held too long with another young mother in the park, the way her breath caught every time the hairdresser’s hands brushed her cheek when trimming her hair, a new and surprising friend giving her comfort when she needed it most) she knew her heart and who it loved.

She arranged the biscuits on a plate, meticulously so, taking the opportunity to look away from the soft crinkle of understanding she knew she would see in her eyes as Annie said, “You had to find yourself too. Just differently.” She went to the table. The plate clattered as she set it down roughly. There was so much she couldn't say. When she thought about a reunion such as this, and she had many times, she had imagined describing her loving marriage, her husband's position, her children's successes. She’d imagined, she supposed, as she sat there willing herself to say such simple things, that this spoke to some lingering fear and self doubt within her. That this oft rehearsed daydream of cheerfully rattling off the public milestones of a life consciously chosen and a love carefully cultivated in twenty-one years worth of soft moments might somehow free her from needing to understand, or at least might make her worthy of it. 

But the silence stretched on and she said none of it. Not six months earlier she had seen her husband near death, comatose in hospital, looking for all the world like he was gone from her forever. Not three months earlier she had waited outside the bank, able to do nothing while her darling baby was trapped inside only to have her leave the next morning weeping at the very table where she now sat. She looked across at Annie through all the years of life, through even just the last year of her life, and any kind of pain she felt was blunted, distant, dull compared to the sharp almost piercing pain she felt every time she woke in the night to her husband coughing or checked the mailbox and found nothing from Joan. 

For herself she didn’t need to say anything. For Annie there was only one thing really. She tipped some cream into her cup, and while she was looking away said, “I’m sorry.” 

She heard how strange her voice sounded, stilted and abrupt. Annie's response was calm and she had paused just as long as it took for the milk to disperse in the tea.

“It’s alright.”

There was no touch of bitterness and when she looked at her there was kindness in her eyes. “But, I should have told you before...any of it.”

“Yes, that is probably true,” she sighed good naturedly and seemed to breathe the tension out of the room. “But...it is alright. It was a long time ago.” She held her eyes for a moment and Win could feel herself give a slight nod, and then Annie took one of the biscuits and leaned back in her chair. “So tell me more about Sam then.”


End file.
